[Arneldo]

Former Big Brother contestant Sophie Pritchard has told Sky News Online she was bullied by Jade Goody in the 2002 show.

Sophie said Jade "made her life hell" and she does see parallels with the current Shilpa Shetty situation in the house.

The 29-year-old, from Marlow in Buckinghamshire, said Jade is "not a nice person" and "every time you speak, she tries to put you down".

Sophie came in the late in the show and claims her fellow contestant took an instant disliking to her.

She said of the abuse in 2002: "You can't be yourself in the house. You get paranoid".

It was only when she came out of the show that she realised what a negative effect Jade was having on her.


When asked about the rows with Shilpa, she said "Jade used the same tactics to make my life hell."

She suggested that it could have been a class difference because Sophie is well spoken, with her friends calling her posh.

The single mother said that when Jade came out of the house originally "everyone despised her" but "in the last few years, people have forgotten what she was really like."

She said now the true Jade has come back to the surface.

Sophie also doubts the media will shun Jade because people want to hear her side of the story.

Two of her claims to fame are that she had the first Big Brother wedding with fellow contestant Lee Pritchard and the pair had the first BB baby, although they separated last February.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/...247929,00.html

[James]

Good to hear from Sophie. I'm pleased the real Jade has been found out.

I've been saying this all along.

[arista]

Yes Sophie looked very well.

[Diablo]

the real Jade has resurfaced her ugly head!!

[Leona]

Awwww, sweet sophie, nice to hear from her!

[andybigbro]

Thanks for the Info

[Psylocke]

I think all big BB fans remebered the way sophie was bullied

[Ruth]

Sophie had class, like Shilpa.

[Sophii3x]

Nice to hear from Sophie!

[Ruth*Star]

Good to here from Sophie. Shes telling the plain truth there.

[Dan_]

I'm suprised more has not been made out of the way she bullied Sophie in the past,it's bemusing that some of the public's opinion changed on her after the way she behaved.

[Slartibartfast]

Sophie was a classy, well spoken girl who was also quite pretty (certainly better looking than Jade). There have been a few of us who have pointed out the similarities between Jades treatment of her and Jades treatment of Shilpa. Remembering how Jade treated Sophie before is certainly one reason why I have had major doubts that her current behaviour is racially motivated.

[James]

I seem to remember Jade having a problem with Sophie because she had a black boyfriend.

I think that was part of the bullying in that case.

[Psylocke]

Originally posted by James
I seem to remember Jade having a problem with Sophie because she had a black boyfriend.

I think that was part of the bullying in that case.

[Slartibartfast]

Originally posted by James
I seem to remember Jade having a problem with Sophie because she had a black boyfriend.

I think that was part of the bullying in that case.

I really don't remember that at all. I remember Sophie and Lee got together, but that was really after she had left the house.

(Goes off to do a search of the BB3 threads....)

[lily.]

To be honest, I never started watching BB til the middle of BB3, so I don't remember much about it. But I do remember Sophie being left out a lot of the time.

[Slartibartfast]

Well, well. James you could be onto something there. I did a search in the BB3 threads and found this thread, with this post:

Originally posted by James
Everyone here seems to think that Jade is just a naive, in_nocent girl that PJ has taken advantage of.

But she knew what PJ was like, from the way he has talked over the past two weeks, and still behaved in the way that she did with him.

Jade's an adult and although he might look about 32 PJ's actually only a year older than Jade.

As far as I am concerned, Jade and PJ deserve each other.

And I think you should be aware that Jade has made some remarks about why she _nominated Sophie and Lee - itself a breach of the rules - that betray a quite racist attitude.

Channel 4 probably won't broadcast them though.

http://www.thisisbigbrother.com/foru...id=1214&page=2

As you'll see, the post is by you James! I did a search for racism, racist, bully and a few others (just to check, if I wanna search for more than one word, does the search function accept Boolean search commands?) and that was the only post I could find that mentioned anything about Jade being racist towards Sophie. And it doesn't give a lot of detail of what she said.

If anyone has any better success, let me know, there might be something in this but at the moment the evidence suggests it's all in James' head

[Ruth]

It was pretty obvious why Jade hated Sophie - as I said earlier, Sophie had class and brains, and she was a very pretty girl. The same can be said of Shilpa. (Danielle's face looked like a smacked a**e when Shilpa first walked into the house - she clearly thought that she (Danielle) would be the house 'beauty'). If Shilpa was not beautiful, I don't think Jade would be buillying her.

I personally didn't think it was about racism, but having read that old post of James' from BB3, it does make you wonder...

[James]

I have been looking too. Difficult to find direct evidence of it.

But here's a forum posting (from 2005)...

More shocking is how the producers forgot to cut the sound on the live feed when a drunken Jade gave one reason for not liking Sophie as being the way she threw herself at black men. That obviously never made the main show. Nor was much made of the fact Jade's apology to Sophie came shortly after a 2 hour long meeting with a psychologist.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s...9&postcount=16

Here another mention...

She was racist in the original series she was in, calling the Asian woman from there a 'ninja' because of the fact Asian women may wear veils and also was rude to Sophie when she discovered she had a preference for Black men.

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question...5222903AADJOJ2

Here's a Jade school bullying story from around the time of BB3...

Bullying Jade tormented me for two years

Victim ... Katie Berwick says Jade led gang who tormented her at their school

EXCLUSIVE By GRANT ROLLINGS

BIG Brother’s Jade Goody was suspended from school after bullying a girl for two years.

Fellow ex-pupil Katie Berwick says Jade, 21 — famed for sticking the knife into telly housemates—made her life hell - put her through hell — by turning her into an outcast at school.

Jade has become one of the nation’s most hated characters after rubbishing her Big Brother housemates behind their backs.

She helped turn the telly house against leggy fellow contestant Sophie Pritchard, 24, who was eventually voted out.

Now Katie says Jade treated her the same way during their days at Bacon’s College in Rotherhithe, South East London.

She said she hated going to lessons because Jade and her friends picked on her.

Jade, now a dental nurse, was suspended several times. Katie said: “She was the ringleader. She knew I was quiet and thought I was an easy target.

“She’d tell the other girls that I’d said bad things about them when I hadn’t and they would turn on me.

“She’s even worse in real life than she is on the show. People need to know what she’s like.

“Some of her friends are saying she isn’t being portrayed fairly on the show. But Jade is not a nice girl. I was hurt by what she did to me.”

Katie, who works in telesales and was born on the same day as Jade, added: “It was verbal bullying. She never hit me.

“It was like the way she treated Sophie on Big Brother.

“It was weird. At the end of it all Jade gave me a hug, just like she did Sophie. It was strange behaviour.

“It happened from the second year to the fourth year.

“I didn’t want to go to school because I hated to be in classes with her.

“In the end I think she got bored with bullying me because I wouldn’t play along.

“While it made my time at school tough, I think it has made me a stronger person in the long run.” Jade’s mum Jackie Budden, 44, also got involved in the row.

Katie recalled: “She came to our house and had a few words with my mum.”

Full story here - http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2002310473,00.html

EDIT: Something else from 2002...

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/fre...1c00019b1ec287

[lily.]

Hmms... all her skeletons are falling out of the closet now aren't they!?

That makes very interesting reading James. Although, from experience I know that it's people with low self esteem who often bully others, and Jade definitely fits the bill there.

[Slartibartfast]

Impressive research work there James!

I'm wondering who was the Asian woman originally in BB3 with Jade? My memory isn't the greatest (I think Narinda was in BB2) I can't remember who the asian person was in BB3.

Looks like there could be something there, particularly with Sophie's penchant for black men which it seems may have bothered Jade. Now that is strange considering Jade's own racial diversity (her father was black, or of mixed race?)

[Bells]

Thanks for all that information Aaron and James.
I'm glad Sophie has spoken up, it's only made things clearer.
Jade obviously has learnt nothing over the last two years despite having two children and having 'been through a lot'.

[Ruth]

Originally posted by Slartibartfast
Impressive research work there James!

I'm wondering who was the Asian woman originally in BB3 with Jade? My memory isn't the greatest (I think Narinda was in BB2) I can't remember who the asian person was in BB3.

Looks like there could be something there, particularly with Sophie's penchant for black men which it seems may have bothered Jade. Now that is strange considering Jade's own racial diversity (her father was black, or of mixed race?)

There was an Asian woman in there. She walked after less than a week - I think her name was Sunita.

[Slartibartfast]

Of course, she was the trainee barrister who walked out. I remember it all now. Gave lawyers a bad name, hasn't been one on BB since (unless my memory has let me down again!)

[James]

I wonder if Rik Waller will speak out about his treatment by Jade on Back to Reality?